Belated news

Hey everyone! Sorry for the late update, things have been crazy the last week or so.

Even now I am rather short on time. Woke up early this morning (7:45!) and went jogging with Katrin, a girl from Germany, for about an hour, had a quick shower and decided to have a wee breakfast before continuing my day. Am thinking of using the morning as best as I can and go to the very small mall nearby called Vivre (the japanese like to butcher languages such as English, Spanish and French) and do some shopping. I have lost four kilos since coming to Japan so I´m starting to need new pants...

Yesterday a big group from the I-House ventured into town to see Noh and Kyogen plays, which are traditional Japanese theater styles. Very different from what we are used to back home, I must say. First we had the Kyogen play, which is a kind of comedy, usually used to break up the Noh plays - because they can go on for hours and hours or even days! It only went on for about 20 minutes, which was a pity as it was very entertaing. The plot was that a man and his servant tried to steal a sword from a samurai but fail. They then decide to attack him and tie him up but while the man holds the samurai the servant has to start tying the rope before he can tie him up. So in the end the samurai gets away. The moral of the story is an old Japanese proverb that says not to wait to tie the rope until the ... well I forget. But anyway, you should always be prepared.

The Noh play was much more dramatic, the actors moved painstakingly slow across the floor (by the way, this is what the stage looked like) and talked in a singing voice, pronouncing every syllable very slowly and clearly. In spite of this, I think it´s hard for even the japanese people to understand what the Noh actors are saying. I understood most of the Kyogen play but completely got lost at the Noh one. The costumes were very beautiful and interesting, two of the characters (I think they were ghosts but you can never be too sure...) had traditional Noh masks which I have never before seen in real life, and the music was something we would never hear back home.
Afterwards we went out for hamburgers and ice cream... every day there is ice cream, those four kilos are gonna come back with a vengence soon enough!

As I had a lecture on Thursday and Friday I was extremely fatigued come Friday evening so I stayed at the I-House instead of going with the tutors to Shabu Shabu.
The Friday lecture was on Iceland, and all I can say is that I really hope what I said won´t appear on a test. :o  I didn´t prepare at all as I thought the teacher would do most of the teaching but he said something to me in japanese which I think I kind of understood and then proceeded to say "douzo!" (go ahead) and sat down at the back. So I was left standing there with 30 Japanese people looking at me expectantly, without a plan. I didn´t even know what language to speak so it was a jumble of English, Japanese and Icelandic with a touch of Danish and Swedish for examples of how similar the languages are. But I got into the spirit of it and ad-lipped some random information about Iceland and in the end I got so excited to teach about my countries strange customs and ways that I really enjoyed myself, especially when they referred to me as sensei (teacher). :)
They even offered me to come to dinner with them afterwards but I had already planned to take the night off so I took five minutes to apologize properly in Japanese and rush out and back home.
There is always so much going on here that I welcomed a quiet evening of eating ice cream (again!), watching a movie and going to bed early. I had to wake up early the next day as we had a class field trip to Mt. Hiei with our religion teacher.

Mt. Hiei came as a spiritual drop of honey for my thirsty soul. For pure accident we stumbled upon a ritual the monks for preforming in honor of the founder of the convent, Saicho. He is credited for creating the Tendai school of Buddhism which he brought with him from China. So we sat there for 15 minutes or so, listening to the chanting and I grabbed the opportunity to do some meditating with live monk music, which was just pure bliss. We walked around the grounds and saw just a few of the over 300 complexed located at the mountain. For example the buildings where the monks have to do rituals to be ordained to the rule. If I remember correctly they have three gruesome rituals to get through, for example walk around and around one of the buildings without sleep, for 90 days. They also must fast for a similar period of time etc. I guess you would have to be pretty darn sure this is what you want to be doing with your life...
At one point we met a monk that our teacher seemed to know and he proceeded to give us a small lecture on the hall we were standing in and offered us free drinks afterward. Such nice people, the Japanese. ^^   

As we only saw the west part I believe, a lot of us want to go back again later and take a better look at the rest of the grounds. It was quite a magical day, just walking in the forests, seeing all those statues, monks, rituals, chanting, rosaries, pagodas .... I´m looking forward to going again already.

That is all for now, I have to get going, carpe diem and all that!
Love, hugs and kisses to everyone, wherever you are! Want to fix the comment section so I can hear from you all, if anyone knows enough html to do that, contact me on facebook.
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